カカクコム社長 田中実の忘我録

Traffic of this August of kakaku.com

Usually, traffic of kakaku.com for which I mean numbers of unique users and pageviews, would be 4 or 5 % less than ones of July due to summer season when consumers go out for vacation. Especially this year such impact was expected to be stronger because in addition to vacation season, there was Olympic games in Beijing that we thought would shift interest in all the internet traffic to TV.

However, according to bullet report to me yesterday, such impact was much less than our forecast. The kakaku.com's traffic of Augsut was just 1.5% less than one of July. We should scrutinize what was going on now in Japan's internet and its economy, stangnant atomosphere of which might be making Japanese consumers look for lower prices and BBS of each product item through kakaku.com before they actually purchase anything. At any rate, not a bad news. For more details, be kindly requested to wait a bit.

Sincerely,

1st quarter of fiscal year 2009

The captioned quarter already ended on June 30 and today we released its financial performance after our auditor endorsed its authenticity, as per attached. Major figures, sales volume, current profit, net profit after tax were 2.17billion JPY,  835MM JPY, and 478MM JPY respectively, which I feel were better than expected.

Main reason why we could accomplished these figures was our well-performing websites' traffic that generated more sales from CPC, CPA and advertisement.(*)

As for 2nd quarter and/or rest of this fiscal year, I wish we could be sort of epicenter of Japan's internet industry from the viewpoint of innovation and high-quality contents which I do believe lead to good performance.

Looking forward to hearing from you all very soon,

(*)CPC: cost per click/ CPA:cost per action

Blank hereunder.

Looking back at 1st Quarter

When you need to know real value of internet-media companies like kakaku.com, Inc., one of the best approaches is to check numbers of unique users and page views as you already know (UU and PV hereunder respectively).

We disclosed the most recent data available for June last week as per attached(sorry for Japanese). It was very comfortable level and such numbers are still growing. However, what I noticed and now am paying attention to is that such trend is a bit different from the last 2 or 3 years.

Usually, UU & PV first half of the fiscal year (April to September) would be stagnant because such season includes long national holidays (named "Golden Week") and summer vacation season when consumers would go traveling and/or go to movietheaters. And thereafter, in second half, our traffic(UU & PV) would jump up, grabbing demand and consumption for winter bonus and X'mas.

But this year, our traffic(especially kakaku.com itself) is already breaking the last year's highest record, which I am suspecting is reflecting our country's economy.  This summer, it is said in newspapers that bonus income and consumption would be lower level whilst CPI is rising faster and steeper and consumers tend to be more conscious of information for price and BBS (or reputation by other users) before they purchase anything (especially durable goods).

We are determined to augment our commitment to contribute to such needs by our users and I do believe that would be good impact to higher value of this company.

Result of the fiscal year 2008

Today we announced financial data of the fiscal year 2008.  In consolidated basis, annual sales were 6,941MM JPY whilst operating profit and current profit were 1,915MM JPY and 1,930MM JPY respectively.(with flying colors, frankly speaking)

On the other hand, as for this ongoing fiscal year 2009, our projection that was disclosed simultaneously, is 9,000MM JPY for consolidated sales volume, 2,900MM JPY for operating profit and current profit(before tax), the last two figures of which are both 50% more than the previous year's ones.

The only thing we want to stick  to and we are determined to promise is standing for consumers and our users by providing them with useful information for shopping, traveling, restaurants or whatsoever.  By keeping this, I do believe we can acquire broader and deeper supports from them that are essential for our business.

Looking forward to hearing from you all very soon.

Yours sincerely,

Minoru Tanaka, President 

3rd quarter result of the fiscal year 2008

Kakaku.com,Inc. disclosed 3rd quarter financial data today.  Sales, current profit before tax, and net profit after tax were 1.834billion, 574million, 325million JPY respectively, which are mostly equal to 50% of the second half's projection of ours. Thus, at this moment, I am feeling comfortable about these figures when you take into consideration previous trend that 4th quarter's sales and profit had been the highest during each fiscal year.

When I look back at the 3rd quarter, the biggest contributors for sales were "customer support business" and "advertisement" due to higher-than-ever traffic, both UU-wise and pageview-wise speaking. 

One of the reasons of  this traffic growth is "Shopping search service" that covers almost all the price and commodity data available at biggest shopping website including Yahoo shopping, Rakuten, Amazon JPN, and Bidders that could accelerate frequency for our users to visit kakaku.com.

Aside from kakaku.com itself, tabelog.com that is BBS website for restaurants has shown very sharp increase of UU and PV up to 4.7MM UU and 50MM PV approximately.

We are determined to continue this favorable growth rate and have this carried over to the next fiscal year.

Very best regards,

Minoru Tanaka, President

(English version's IR papers would be available later. Sorry for inconvenience in advance.)

1st half of this fiscal year

Kakaku.com, Inc. could mark good financial record, which is better than the initially disclosed our own projection for sales volume and operating profit by approximately 10% and 40% respectively in consolidated basis.

I feel like attributing these results to increased traffic (meaning number of unique users and page views) and also to revised and augmented services including "CRM base" that is newly developed ad service and other lucrative subsidiaries, like 4travel and kakaku.com financial, Inc. etc.

Looking at the second half of this fiscal year, this trend is continuing and we are looking forward to seeing better results by renewal of our web-site, kakaku.com  and refurbishing search engine functions, both already done and integrating ID services between kakaku.com and other web-sites operated by us, accelerating cross-use of our customers.

At any rate, our policy-customer first would not change for good and I promise that kakaku.com would keep its unique position as number 1 pro-consumer web site.

Minoru Tanaka, president

kakaku.com, Inc.

1st quarter result of FY2008

August 23rd, 2008

To foreign investors

So sorry that English version of the captioned was not available until today.  However, finally you could take a look at it at kakaku.com.

While our projection for the first half of this fiscal year is 2.7 billion JPY for sales volume and 400 million JPY for current profit before tax (both numbers were already released at 15th, May 2007), the result of first 3 months was 1.48 billion JPY and 245 million respectively.  Thus I think I could be allowed to say we are going forward a bit faster than expected.

To augment traffic (unique users & page view) of tabelog.com (restaurants bbs site) and mansion DB (search engine for new apartment), and accelerate newly introduced FX service (kakaku FX), kakaku.com,Inc. is planning to spend sort of expense for their promotion and positive results are already being realized in sales and profit.  For the 2nd quarter, kakaku.com, Inc. is prepared to release more new services useful for our customers and lucrative for the company.

Looking forward to hearing any questionnaires or opinions from you all, maybe at coming one-on-one meetings or other occasions.

Sincerely yours,

Minoru Tanaka, President

M&A of eiga.com

On yesterday's board meeting of kakaku.com, Inc., we agreed to sign a letter of understanding to acquire 70% issued stock of eiga.com (unlisted) that has engaged in movie-related web contents since 1998. (Actual acquirement is planned to be April 1st, 2007)

By subsidizing this company, I do believe kakaku.com, Inc. would make a very important step to penetrate into entertainment business for which we ourselves did not have human or other required expertise that eiga.com has. On the other hand, we are expecting that we can make use of our own assets on Internet community such as blog services or BBS to supplement eiga.com's already-superb contents.

Furthermore, here in Japan, we are now experiencing that Japan-made movies are exceeding overseas-made movies in market size. To cover such users' expanding demand, I think our affluent human and technology resources of web business are very useful and eiga.com agreed on that idea.

At any rate, we have to go through due diligence process before reaching the final agreement that I guess would be around end of March.  Thus, until then, be kindly requested to allow me to think I should confine myself to disclosing information included in the news release (sorry, Japnese only).

However, let me announce this deal surely would augment our already-lucrative business model and such result would be realized even in the next fiscal year.

intangible asset

Recently, I do have several chances to ponder what is the key to sever success from failure in this NET or IT industry.

No doubt that one of them is a sort of technology to support our business.  However, not only tech guys but also all the other human resources are the one and only factor I know I should put the most emphasis on to augment and/or maximize value of this company.

Internet is literally interactive communication conduit and now matter how deeply you would be involved in technology side, there are always permanent questions, what you want to express and communicate using that. Further more, that fact that such conduit is interactive means if you are not surrounded by superb human resources, it would be found sooner and easier than one way communication business like TV or radio, because our users do have much more opportunity to communicate us.

Thus, though it is a kind of intangible asset in accounting-side B/S, the most important resources in our business are and must be human ones and I would etch this thing in my mind indelibly and for good as long as I am engaged here.